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I had to smile at the TK max credit card fraud story today, 48 hours after the close of an ecrime congress, where we heard that the largest criminal "Bot Network" of computers detected to date is 1.5 million, by the Dutch government computer emergency response team, who spoke at the event.

You can, by the way, hear the BBC coverage on 'Moneybox' here. All about 'Smishing', 'Phishing' and 'Vishing' with some input from me.

I spoke with both Sky News and the BBC this morning, who were looking for pundits, Thanet, being a little too far away to send an outside broadcast camper van with a satellite dish on. Sky very sensibly went after Professor Ross Anderson at Cambridge as suggested, who in turn, revealed what a complete mess the whole ecrime reporting system is.

From Monday, the banks assume responsibility, from the police - who don't report it anyway - for online crime. So if you are ripped-off, go tell you bank and they are supposed to infor…

Having not written a word for a few days, I’m writing a few somewhere between Italy and Sicily at 35,000 feet on the way back in from the Middle East this morning as everyone at home is waking up.

I’ve come to the conclusion that somewhere in this part of the world there’s a huge factory in the desert turning out tens of thousands of camels, carpets and fake handbags to be sold in every bazaar from Tunis to Aswan. Once upon a time, one could find something unique in the Souk but today one has to try much harder or go “off the beaten” track to find a souvenir or any real interest or value. Oman is good for Frankincense and Silver and Dubai is great for Gold and Russian gangsters but most other places, going shopping means having to run the gauntlet of stuffed camel traders, shouting “Luvly jubly mate –you from England?” as if this were some powerful magic spell, with the power to part the foolish tourist from his money. Del Boy Trotter has a great deal to answer for if that’s the best s…

I watched Dr John Reid blaming Michael Howard - the former Conservative Home Secretary - for the immigration problem, with open-mouthed amazement this morning.

On Sky News, he was busily telling us that ID cards are the solution and that the Conservatives were and are the problem. Earlier this week I was with Professor Ross Anderson from Cambridge, the acknowledged expert on the technology surrounding ID Cards and his opinions in regards to the value of identity cards as a practical solution to identity managment, differ greatly with the Home Secretary. Having campaigned on the same technical platform I have to agree with him.

So, John Reid, is, after ten years, only now clearing up the mess that the Tories left or that's what he would have you think. Immigration, crime, guns, you name it, it's all the other bloke's fault and now he's found out about it, he's putting it right.

Does Dr Reid really believe the electorate are that dim? Apparently so.

It’s been five years since the first ecrime congress and this month will witness leading figures from government, business, finance and law-enforcement assembling in London, once again, to explore, discuss and hopefully suggest some solutions to deal with an epidemic of crime in cyberspace.

A recent DTI report to the Parliamentary Science & Technology Committee, (POST) conceded that the last 3-4 years has seen the emergence of virtual organised crime groups (OCGs) who are highly organised and operate exclusively via the Internet. Their membership is geographically dispersed and multinational. And their main goal is the exploitation of the Internet to steal personal data and identity to facilitate fraud. These groups continue to grow in size, number and sophistication.

The UK, ‘Broadband Britain’ as you might expect is the most popular place in the world for such OCGs to do business. After all, there are 17 million Internet bank accounts…